


the worst way to waste time

by toushindai (WallofIllusion)



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: During Canon, Exes, F/M, Falling into old patterns, Mild Sexual Content, Post-Relationship, then cutting that short and falling into different old patterns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 13:12:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17407559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WallofIllusion/pseuds/toushindai
Summary: A lot has changed, but not everything. Theyareolder now, yes, but wiser may be a bit too much to ask.





	the worst way to waste time

**Author's Note:**

> I spent my first, eh, 80 runs or so trying to figure out what the _fuck_ these two are to each other, and then That line (you know the one) suggested the possibility of "exes," and I have not for even one second looked back since.
> 
> Zag has been running from his emotions so diligently that I'm not entirely certain I have him correct here, but with the idea being that they're both slipping back into old patterns of interaction... well, I hope it works.

He brings ambrosia back for Meg whenever he can. It makes a decent excuse to talk to her, and she accepts his generosity, even if she casts it as disposing of contraband. Or calls it bribery. Or accuses him of sycophancy. She knows him too well to think that any of those things are true, but he plays along with her fictions, because she can’t sort kindness from pity and would never accept something that might be mistaken for the latter.

After a dozen or so rounds of this, she only sends a long look at the bottle he places next to her wine glass and follows it up with a long look at him. She rolls her eyes. “Why not,” she mutters, dismissive. “Your room?”

His eyebrows shoot up. “I was… just thinking we could share this,” he protests, “nothing more.”

She locks eyes with him, all intention and imperious fire, and it stirs memories in the recesses of his body. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t still think of her sometimes, or if he tried to claim that their recent battles didn’t remind him of the way they used to spar until their bodies thrummed with the need for a different kind of touch. But they’d left that behind them, he thought. Meg had distanced herself after he’d broken it off, and these fights to the death are the most they’ve seen of each other in a year, and Meg has made her distaste for the entire situation and for _him_ amply clear. But when his eyes dip down to check how much wine she’s already consumed, she scoffs and hooks one knuckle under his chin to drag his gaze back up to hers.

“Yes or no, Zag?”

Well, she won’t explain herself if he asks here. And Zagreus can’t fight desire _and_ curiosity _and_ his longing to repair their friendship before he’s gone forever, not all at once. He palms the ambrosia bottle off the table and slips it back into his tunic. “I’m up for it if you are.”

She drains the last of her wine and stands. “Let’s go, then.”

*

She doesn’t explain herself in his bedroom, either; instead they split the ambrosia between the two of them, reclining on the bed and thinking more than they talk. When he does try to flat-out ask what brought this on all of a sudden, she only murmurs, “You’re not the _worst_ way to waste time.” It’s high praise, coming from her, and Zagreus thanks her accordingly, but his sincerity only drives her back into silence.

Then the ambrosia is gone and they fall, by second nature, to kissing it off each other’s lips. Honeyed sweetness mixes with the tang of iron on Meg’s skin, and Zagreus realizes he must taste the same way. It’s not unpleasant. And they remember each other too well to stay hesitant for long. She pauses only to set her armor aside; then she is atop him and his arms are around her shoulders (gods, those shoulders—he’s missed her) and they’re both panting as she grinds deliberately against his semi. His hands slide towards her rear, _needing_ her closer, but through the haze of anticipation and want he stops, pulls himself together. This doesn’t make sense.

“Meg,” he says, his touch settling on her waist instead and stilling her movement. “Are you sure you want this?”

“Really, Zag?” she snaps. She glares down at him, impatience on her face. He sends a wry smile her way and cradles her jaw in one hand; she just narrows her eyes. “What?”

“What are you _really_ thinking about?” he asks. He can’t believe that she’s suddenly overcome with memory and lust, as convenient as it would be to think so. Not her. Not the Meg he knows.

She glares for a moment longer, then takes his wrists in her hands and shoves them down against the pillows, pinning him. His heart jumps. She leans in, her hair falling over her shoulder to tickle his skin. “You want to know what I’m thinking, Zag?”

“Yes,” he says, his voice coming out at the wrong pitch even though her eyes have only grown colder.

Her thumbs caress the tendons of his wrists. She is close enough to kiss. But then she speaks, her tone callused and cruel. “I’m thinking of tying you to the bed and leaving you here.”

“…Ah.”

He goes cold all at once. His smile tries to slip off his face and his attempt to hold onto it makes it into something twisted instead. Knowing hurt when she sees it, Meg disentangles and turns her back on him to sit on the edge of the bed.

“You don’t let anyone in here to clean up, and by now everyone in the House is used to your absence,” she says. She’s not musing, only reporting her thoughts with a clinical coolness. “It might be days before anyone came looking for you.”

Zagreus sits up, straightens his tunic. He stares at Meg’s back and the tense way her wing trembles as she pretends an impassive ease, and he feels an ache in his chest that won’t recede. “That’s an alternative to my father locking me in a room somewhere, I suppose. Did he put you up to this?”

Meg shakes her head, her silvery hair rippling back and forth. “It was my idea. I knew you’d be naïve enough to fall for it.”

“And then I wasn’t,” Zagreus points out.

“You were naïve enough. But too soft.”

“…I guess you’re right.” Too soft, too sympathetic to her emotions to be usefully consumed and distracted by his own. Which would be why she’s standoffish now, bristling under the auspices of kindness and concern as she always has.

Something hangs in the air, tense and dissatisfied, until Meg gives a quiet sigh. “I was right the first time,” she mutters. “This isn’t ever going to work again.”

 _This_ , she says; she may as well have said _we_. Zagreus leans back on his hands, staring mutely up at his ceiling. He does _know_ that. But they bring out something worthwhile in each other, don’t they? She’d gotten him to lie down this time, if nothing else, and that’s more than he usually does between attempts. If he weren’t angry he might have told her that. Instead he just steels himself against the relief seeping into his exhausted muscles. Silence stretches on between them. 

Then Meg sighs again, standing to buckle her spaulders back into place. He can see her impassive face reflected in the mirror across the room. She catches him looking, and her reflection meets his eyes. “Do you trust me, Zagreus?”

“Yes,” is his unhesitating answer, out of his mouth before he realizes that he shouldn’t right now. That she’s just made that clear. “To a degree,” he adds belatedly.

She scoffs, not buying the addition, and turns to face him. “You trust me,” she accuses.

“Yes,” he says again, and lets it stand on its own this time.

“Then tell me, Zagreus, why do you think I’m trying to stop you?”

Something twinges in his chest, but he answers with the obvious: “It’s your job. I know Father is making you—”

“No.” Her eyes are hard, and the rest of Zagreus’s claim dies on his tongue. “Forget about Lord Hades. Why do you think _I’m_ doing this?”

His brow furrows as he tries to read her face. He’s seen her speaking with Nyx between his attempts, heard snatches of conversation: Nyx reassuring her of her role in the House, a role built of duty and responsibility and all of those things Meg takes to like breathing. He tries again with what has to be the answer: “It’s your job.”

But that prompts an exasperated glare. “Blood and darkness, Zag, are you this dense on purpose?”

“What, then?” he says, because he can’t guess the answer.

She opens her mouth as if to respond, but then tosses her head and turns away, towards the door back to the hallway. “Forget it. I should just get back to work. Clearly there’s no getting through to you without putting a hole through your chest first.”

“Meg, wait.” He scrambles out of bed and catches her arm, wanting to hear what she meant to tell him. “I trust you,” he affirms again, and hopes she’ll say the rest.

She pulls free and faces him, one eyebrow arched. “Then listen to me, Zag, you need to stop what you’re doing.”

He freezes. Of course it comes down to this. “Meg,” he says, holding his voice even, “you know I can’t. You know what this means to me.”

“I know what you think you’re going to get out of it,” she responds. “But I keep telling you, you’re chasing after a delusion.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” she insists.

“You _can’t_ —”

“Do you trust me?”

“ _Yes_ ,” he answers, again.

“Then do you think I’m lying to you?”

Her eyes blaze, and Zagreus feels pinned in place once more. She’s cornered him. Because if she isn’t doing this for his father, for her job—if he doesn’t believe that she would lie to stop him—then the only explanation left—

He closes his eyes and he shakes his head and he holds fast to the memory of his mother’s handwriting. “There’s a way out of this place,” he says. “My mother found it, and I will too.”

Her hand is in his hair then and she twists hard, knocking his laurels askew. He winces.

“Look at me, Zag.”

“Meg, let go.” He doesn’t open his eyes.

“Look me in the eyes and tell me you believe that I would mislead you to keep you home.” Her voice has gotten dangerous and quiet, barely louder than a breath. “If you can’t do that, admit you understand that I mean what I’m saying. Those are your choices.”

“ _Meg_.” He wrenches his hair from her grasp and opens his eyes and sees exactly what he knew he would: Megaera the Fury radiating superiority and fierce scorn, all of it turned directly on him. She never has considered the possibility that she might be wrong. She just keeps treating him like a child to be shamed into good behavior, whatever her definition of that may be. And if the lilting rasp of her voice and the way her grip has left his scalp throbbing are familiar—if they stir memory in the core of his body—then this argument is just as familiar and it makes his heart race with anger rather than desire. He bares his teeth when he glares at her. “I don’t care if you mean what you’re saying. You don’t know what the Fates have in store for me any better than I do, and I won’t just sit here and rot away waiting for them to decide the course of my life.”

Meg’s lips twist in a tired sneer. “They’ll decide the course of your life wherever you try to go, and they will _always_ bring you back here. To where you belong.”

“I _don’t_ belong here!” This he knows better than anything else in his life; this he feels deep in the pit of his heart, unshakably, a voice crying out endlessly that there _has_ to be something for him beyond the suffocating weight of his father’s domain. His certainty chokes his voice when he speaks. “Gods, Meg, do we have to have this fight _again_?”

Her jaw sets, just like it always has, and he prepares to hear all the arguments he knows by heart now: that he was born here and will remain here, that he would find a place here if only he would look (as if he’s never looked!), that he knows nothing of the Underworld’s workings and should sit down and shut up until he’s learned to respect them—

But then Meg bats her wing in a shrug. “No,” she says, her voice cold. “You never listen anyway, and I have better things to do.”

“Of course you do.” So he’s not such a good way to waste time, after all. An ugly emotion flares in his chest and he shapes it into faux politeness. “Well, don’t let me keep you.”

She sniffs. “See you soon.” The sneer in her eyes turns it into a threat, and before Zagreus can offer a parting shot of his own, she’s turned away and left. He grits his teeth as she goes. _She_ won’t have to fight her way through hordes of wretches to get to where she’s going; she’s granted passage to the edges of Tartarus unopposed. It’s only him who isn’t allowed out of his own damn house, like he’s young enough to still be bound by a curfew.

Well, the wretches can’t stop him, and neither can his father and neither can Meg. Thank the gods that he’s already gotten out of bed. He has no time to rest. His arms and calves are still quivering with exhaustion, but if he gets moving again it won’t matter. He wrestles out of his tunic and changes into a clean one. Then he heads into the courtyard to leave his home behind, one more time.

*

A few hours later and he’s back in Meg’s hall, Aegis heavy and pulsing on his arm. He wants to make it quick this time. He doesn’t like feeling this way about her, but sometimes there’s nothing else for it.

In any case, the feeling looks to be mutual. Meg’s lip curls in something remarkably close to hatred as they start to circle each other. “I guess we’ll just keep doing this the painful way.”

“Every single time,” he answers with false cheer in his voice.

“Idiot.”

The insult glances off him. Maybe he is, but he’s not going to stop. And he sees in Meg’s eyes that she knows that—accepts it, even.

“Just remember that you chose this,” she says, and they begin again.


End file.
